1,000 Words

Forest of Memory

When photographer Elena Baca Suquet first exhibited her images of Central Mexico’s Sierra Gorda wilderness
at the Culture and Arts Institute in her home state of Querétaro, she called the series Añoranzas – “nostalgia,” or “longing.” For
Baca, the title was personal. It referred to the period 10 years earlier when she discovered the one million acre
World Biosphere Reserve while working as a youth instructor for a local environmental group. Her time in the mountains,
she says, was life changing. It was at once her introduction to the marvelous power of the natural world and a
formative experience for her as an artist. As Baca explained in an interview accompanying the exhibit: “Surrounded
by an intimate and lonely atmosphere, full of spirituality, I dove into a world of shapes, colors, textures and
rhythms, where shadow and light reigned.”

For those who have never been to the Sierra Gorda, Añoranzas may carry a different meaning. The feeling
of nostalgia reflects not a personal longing for a specific time and place, but the universal sense of loss for
all we have destroyed. In some places – deep in the Amazon, say, or in the northernmost reaches of the Boreal – the
ancient forests persist. But they are islands, long ago cut off from the epoch in which, as legend has it, a squirrel
could have traveled from Maine to Missouri without touching the ground.

Baca’s gauzy photographs of the Sierra Gorda, then, are a glimpse back through time. The images of the
Sierra Gorda’s old-growth woods reveal what the forest primeval must once have looked like – the trees
before the Fall. The nostalgia the viewer may feel is for an unlived remembrance. Yet the feeling of loss is still
powerful, for it touches on the collective, shared memory of the place we came from.

Baca’s Añoranzas series is a departure from her typical style. Usually she digitally manipulates
her photographs to create dark, fantasy-like images. Her Sierra Gorda photos, she says, are “transparent.” They
don’t need any artifice. The sights are, on their own, like something remembered from a dream.

In addition to numerous exhibits in Querétaro, Baca’s photographs have been shown in Houston, Mexico
City, and Havana. You can see more of her work by visiting www.flickr.com/photos/elenabaca.